Alicia D'Anvers ée Clarke(baptised 1668–1725) was an English poet known for her satires of academic life.

Biography

Born in Oxford, her father,

Samuel Clarke Samuel Clarke (11 October 1675 – 17 May 1729) was an English philosopher and Anglican cleric. He is considered the major British figure in philosophy between John Locke and George Berkeley. Clarke's altered, Nontrinitarian revision of the 1 ...

(bap. 1624, d. 1669), was superior

beadle A beadle, sometimes spelled bedel, is an official who may usher, keep order, make reports, and assist in religious functions; or a minor official who carries out various civil, educational or ceremonial duties on the manor. The term has pre- ...

of civil law and first ''architypographus'', or director of printing, for the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

. He died when she was two. She married barrister Knightley D'Anvers (c.1670–1740), son of Jane Knightly and physician Daniel D'Anvers, in 1688. D'Anvers had no children. D'Anvers is known to have published two poems with a third generally attributed to her. ''A Poem Upon His Sacred Majesty, His Voyage For Holland: By way of Dialogue, Between Belgia and Britannia'' (1691) was dedicated to Queen Mary; it is a poetic dialogue between Britannia and Belgia which addresses criticisms that

King William III William III (William Henry; ; 4 November 1650 – 8 March 1702), also known as William of Orange, was the sovereign Prince of Orange from birth, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from 167 ...

had divided loyalties between the Netherlands, the country of his birth, and Britain. According to

Germaine Greer Germaine Greer (; born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and feminist, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminism movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specializing in English and women's literature, she ...

et al., it is "as dull as might be expected," but another commentator calls it politically "daring."Smith, Hilda L. ''Women and the literature of the seventeenth century: an annotated bibliography based on Wing's Short-title catalogue''. New York : Greenwood Press, 1990, p. xv.
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The second and third poems — ''Academia, or, The Humours of the University of Oxford. In

Burlesque A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.

Verse'' (1691) and ''The Oxford-Act: a Poem'' (1693) — satirise elements of academic life at the

. These latter were part of a long tradition of university satire not usually practiced by women. D'Anvers would seem to have been quite familiar with college politics, and both poems target the alleged sexual activities of Oxford students. ''The Oxford-Act'' is particularly bawdy, which may explain why it was published anonymously.Nelson, Holly Faith. �
D'Anvers , Alicia (bap. 1668, d. 1725)
” ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 30 Dec. 2006. ''Academia, or, The Humours of the University of Oxford'' was D'Anvers' most popular poem; told from the perspective of a town servant, it lampoons the current state of the university through the eyes of a visiting country bumpkin, one John Blunder, and consists of 1,411 lines of "robust colloquial

iambic tetrameter Iambic tetrameter is a meter (poetry), poetic meter in Ancient Greek poetry, ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spo ...

s, called hudibrastics." One modern commentator has described D'Anvers as "that splendid Oxford satirist" though another characterizes ''Academia'' as "ribald, scurrilous doggerel." Her work has been anthologized in ''Kissing the Rod'' (1988),Greer , pp. 376–382. and ''Early Modern Women Poets''.Stevenson, Jane, and Peter Davidson, eds. ''Early modern women poets'' (2001): an anthology. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 486–488.
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Works

London, Printed for Tho. Bever, at the Hand and Star, near Temple Barr, in Fleet-street, 1691.

London: Printed and sold by Randal Taylor near Stationers Hall, 1691 (repr. 1716, 1730). *

'. London: Printed for Randal Taylor, 1693.

Notes

References

*Blain, Virginia, , eds. "D'Anvers , Alicia." ''The Feminist Companion to Literature in English''. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1990. 264.
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. *D'Anvers, Alicia. ''A Poem Upon His Sacred Majesty, His Voyage for Holland; Academia - or, the Humours of the University of Oxford in Burlesque Verse; and The Oxford-Act: A Poem''. Ashgate, 2003. . *Greer, Germaine, , eds. ''Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Women's Verse''. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1988. 376–382. . *Nelson, Holly Faith. �
D'Anvers , Alicia (bap. 1668, d. 1725)
” ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 30 Dec. 2006. *Simonova, N. "D’Anvers, Alicia." ''The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing''. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2021. Accessed 220 August 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01537-4_163-2

Biography

Works

Notes

References

See also